Just then he heard a sudden whistling sound, and chips of stone spattered him. Ducking, he saw a quarrel, its shaft split by the impact, bounce once on the rooftop then plummet over the edge, spinning wildly.
A soft moan escaped his lips and he scrambled across the roof to the far side. Without pause he jumped. Ten feet down was an awning, sagged and stretched out of shape, on which he landed. The iron spars framing the canvas dipped but held. From there it was a quick climb down to the street.
Crokus jogged to the corner, where an old building squatted with yellow light bleeding through dirty windows. A wooden sign hung above the door, bearing the faded image of a bird dead on its back, feet jutting upward. The thief bounded up the steps and pushed open the door.
A rush of light and noise washed over him like balm. He slammed the door behind him and leaned against it. He closed his eyes, pulling the disguising cloth from his face and head, revealing shoulder-length black hair-now dripping with sweat-and regular features surrounding light blue eyes.
As he reached up to wipe his brow a mug was pushed into his hand.
Crokus opened his eyes to see Sulty hurry by, carrying on one hand a tray loaded with pewter tankards. She glanced at him over her shoulder and grinned. “Rough night, Crokus?”
He stared at her, then said, “No, nothing special.” He raised the mug to his lips and drank deep.
Across the street from the ramshackle Phoenix Inn, a hunter stood at the roof's edge and studied the door through which the thief had just passed.
The crossbow lay cradled in its arms.
The second hunter arrived, sheathing two long-knives as it came alongside the first.
“What happened to you?” the first hunter asked quietly, in its native tongue.
“Had an argument with a cat.”
The two were silent for a moment, then the first hunter sighed worriedly. “All in all, too awry to be natural.”
The other agreed. “You felt the parting too, then.”
“An Ascendant: meddled. Too cautious to show itself fully, however.”
“Unfortunate. It's been years since I last killed an Ascendant.”
They began to check their weapons. The first hunter loaded the crossbow and slipped four extra quarrels in its belt. The second hunter removed each long-knife and cleaned it carefully of sweat and grime.
They heard someone approach from behind, and turned to see their commander.
“He's in the inn,” the second hunter said.
“We'll leave no witnesses to this secret war with the Guild,” the first added.
The commander glanced at the door of the Phoenix Inn. Then, to the hunters, she said, “No. The wagging tongue of a witness might be useful to our efforts.”
“The runt had help,” the first hunter said meaningfully.
The commander shook her head. “We return to the fold.”
“Very well.”
The two hunters put away their weapons. The first glanced back at the inn and asked, “Who protected him, do you think?”
The second hunter snarled. “Someone with a sense of humour.”
CHAPTER SIX
There is a cabal breathing deeper than the bellows drawing up the emerald fires beneath rain-glistened cobbles, while you may hear the groaning from the caverns below, the whisper of sorcery is less than the dying sigh of a thief stumbling unwilling into Darujhistan's secret web Cabal (fragment)
Puddle (b. 1122)
The splayed tip of her right wing brushed the scarred black rock as Crone climbed the whistling updraughts of Moon's Spawn. From the pocked caves and starlit ledges her restless brothers and sisters called out to her as she passed. “Do we fly?” they asked. But Crone made no reply. Her glittering black eyes were fixed on heaven's vault. Her enormous wings beat a thundering refrain of taut, unrelenting power. She had no time for the nervous cackling of the younglings; no time for answering their simplistic needs with the wisdom her thousand years of life had earned her.
This night, Crone flew for her lord.
As she rose above the shattered peaks of the Moon's crest a high wind swept her wings, rasping dry and cold along her oily feathers. Around her, thin wisps of shredded smoke rode the currents of night air like lost spirits. Crone circled once, her sharp gaze catching the glimmer of the few remaining fires among the crags below, then she dipped a wing and sailed out on the wind's tide as it rolled northward to Lake Azur.
The featureless expanse of the Dwelling Plain was beneath her, the grass sweeping in grey waves unbroken by house or hill. Directly ahead lay the glittering jewelled cloak that was Darujhistan, casting into the sky a sapphire glow. As she neared the city her unnaturally acute vision detected, here and there among the estates crowding the upper tier, the aquamarine emanation of sorcery.